Google reveals workaround for paid Android Wear apps

Even though Android can run paid apps without any problems whatsoever, the same cannot be said about Android Wear. Google's new operating system for wearables fails to install anything but free offerings, effectively preventing developers from making money.

That is not much of a problem now, as most Android Wear-designed apps are free. But, as the platform gains more traction, this could severely impact developers' interest. Google, however, has decided to reveal a workaround.

"The assets/ directory of those apps, which contains the wearable APK, cannot be extracted or read by the wearable installer", says Google. "The workaround is to place the wearable APK in the res/raw directory instead".

Google has provided the instructions in a blog post linked in the paragraph above. The search giant says that it will release an update to Android SDK "to support APK embedding into res/raw", and update the documentation to include this workaround.

It is a unique situation, and how Google failed to notice this problem prior to releasing Android Wear is beyond me. Compatible smartwatches have already been released by LG (G Watch) and Samsung (Gear Live), with Motorola (Moto 360) to join them also.